Influencer Marketing Automation: Boost your Campaigns

Key points of influencer marketing automation

• Influencer marketing automation allows brands to optimize repetitive processes and focus on more strategic tasks, save time, and optimize the resources invested in their campaigns.
• More than 51% of companies use automation marketing platforms and the market is expected to reach $17 billion, demonstrating how important it is for brands to optimize their marketing campaigns.
• Influencer marketing automation is a valuable tool to empower and facilitate marketing actions, but companies need to strike a balance between task automation and strategic thinking that relies on human intervention.

What is marketing automation and what is it for?

Marketing automation refers to the use of technologies and software to accelerate and automate online marketing activities. It consists of the implementation of automated tools and processes that allow companies to optimize their marketing strategies, manage their campaigns more efficiently, and improve customer relations.

This methodology involves the use of platforms to automate tasks directly related to digital marketing, such as audience segmentation, workflow generation, lead nurturing, and campaign management.

In influencer marketing, automation allows for more efficient management of processes such as identifying suitable influencers, managing relationships with creators, scheduling publications, and monitoring the performance of campaigns on social networks.

What are the applications of automation in influencer marketing?

Automation marketing in influencer campaigns offers a number of benefits:

Search and selection of influencers.

There are several automation tools on the market that allow you to identify and select the most relevant profiles for your brand. With the use of algorithms and data analysis, these softwares allow you to classify influencers based on criteria such as audience or buyer persona, engagement, reach, interests, topics and more. All of this facilitates the selection process for companies. To help professionals fully optimize their influencer marketing campaigns, we at Kolsquare have developed a complete tool based on the latest updates in Big Data, A.I., and Machine Learning. From personalized support for brands to the management of our product, we help you select the best profiles for your campaigns. Get to know our platform and request a demo.

Influencer Relationship Management

Marketing automation makes it easier for brands to manage the relationship with influencers. Generally, with the tools you can send automated emails to establish collaborations, manage contracts, agreements, and send reminders of important dates, which saves time and streamlines communication with influencers.

Content marketing automation

This is one of the main advantages in the management of marketing campaigns with influencers since automation tools allow the scheduling and publishing of content on social networks at specific times. This ensures timely and coordinated publishings with content creators, which helps to maintain consistency and maximizes the reach of posts.

In fact, if you want to go further with your campaigns, there are platforms that not only allow you to schedule content on networks, but you can also use marketing automation tools to manage blogs or emails.

Tracking metrics and analyzing results

With the automation of marketing strategies, large, medium and small companies can collect relevant data and metrics ranging from the customer journey to the overall performance of influencer campaigns. This includes metrics such as reach, engagement, conversions, and return on investment (ROI). By automating the tracking of content and analysis of this data, brands can more effectively evaluate the success of their digital marketing campaigns and make adjustments when necessary to have the desired effects on users.

We recommend reading: Best practices: How to optimize your influencer marketing investments with a data-driven approach?

Benefits of automated marketing in influencer partnerships

The aforementioned applications are in themselves benefits in influencer marketing automation; however, there are other associated advantages that have led more than 51% of companies to implement automation platforms for repetitive tasks.

• Management efficiency: marketing automation facilitates the management of influencer partnerships and increases team productivity. The various stages of the process, such as search, selection, negotiation of agreements, follow-up, and measurement of results, can be managed and controlled by automation tools. This saves time and resources, allowing brands to focus on the most strategic tasks in the process.
• Saving time and resources: managing functions automatically eliminates manual and repetitive tasks, which improves workflow, freeing up the marketing team’s time. By using marketing automation tools for tasks such as sending emails, scheduling posts and tracking metrics, the administrative workload is reduced and efficiency is increased.
• Selecting the most suitable influencers: it can be a challenge for marketing departments to identify the best influencers if they do it manually, i. e. by reviewing profiles on different platforms  based on the information they receive from the content creator. With marketing automation platforms, companies can analyze the data in depth, use filters, and determine more precisely who  the influencers will be with whom their buyer persona can feel most identified.
• Facilitate communication and personalization processes: constant communication is key to the success of a collaboration between brands and influencers; however, sometimes this process is not achieved efficiently since  both parties are occupied with other tasks. Therefore, marketing automation tools are designed to offer individualized communication tailored to the needs and preferences of each influencer, which in turn helps to establish stronger and more authentic relationships.
• Scalability of campaigns: marketing automation allows you to scale and manage collaborations with a larger number of influencers more efficiently. Brands can reach a wider and more diverse audience without compromising the quality and control of collaborations.

How to make an influencer marketing automation plan?

To manage influencer marketing automation, it is necessary to use tools that allow you to manage campaigns more efficiently. For this reason, we have summarized the basic steps that marketing departments should follow to obtain greater benefits:

1. Set clear objectives: clearly defining what you hope to achieve with your influencer collaborations is the first step in the process. This could be increasing brand reach, generating more sales from users, acquiring new leads, boosting audience engagement, or strengthening the brand image.  
2. Identify your target audience: know the profile of your audience according to its  demographics, behavior, interests, and overall customer journey. Having a clear understanding of the customer journey will allow you to improve the personalization of your marketing messages and will also allow you to select the best influencer profiles to better connect with current and potential customers.
3. Select an automation tool: once you have a clear profile of your target audience, research and choose a marketing automation platform that fits your particular needs. Some popular sales or mailing software options include HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, or Mailchimp. In the specific case of social media partnerships, we offer Kolsquare’s leading influencer marketing platform in Europe. In either case, make sure that the tool you select is intuitive and offers the features your company needs.
4. Select the right influencers: as we have already mentioned, you can use automation platforms to search for and select influencers that are relevant to your brand and that will reach the heart of your buyer persona. Based on your KPIs and brand values, you will be able to make a better selection. We recommend reading more about how to choose the right profiles and the best tools on Kolsquare’s influencer marketing blog.
5. Design workflows for your collaboration: creating automated workflows for planning and executing collaborations with influencers saves brands time and effort. These tasks include scheduling posts, submitting content, approving materials, and tracking deadlines. These workflows can help keep the process organized and efficient.
6. Automate content: all marketing messages that your brand wants to share and deliver through influencers can be automated. You can use platforms that allow you to upload and share content centrally, such as images, videos, documents, and relevant links.
7. Track performance: as always, in any digital marketing process the final stage will be measurement. By having sales, content management, or influencer targeting software in place, you will be able to more accurately measure the results of your campaigns in the short and long term.

Read also: How to measure your influencer marketing performance with Kolsquare

Steps you can automate during a digital influencer campaign

• Search and selection of influencers
• Initial contact with the selected influencers
• Negotiation and management of agreements
• Real-time audience segmentation
• Follow-up of publications and content
• Scheduling of publications
• Metrics analysis and tracking
• Payments and compensation

B2B tools for marketing automation and a few examples

Marketing automation tools vary according to their functions. Here are some of the most useful platforms in each of their specialties:

Kolsquare, for brands and agencies that want to manage influencer marketing campaigns.

Kolsquare is an influencer marketing platform that specializes in the selection, management, and tracking of influencers. It offers a wide range of tools and functionalities to facilitate collaboration with influencers and maximize the results of marketing campaigns.

The integrated technology allows marketing departments and interested professionals to identify the best KOL (Key Opinion Leaders) profiles, manage their KOL Marketing campaigns from A to Z, as well as evaluate their results and performance.

On Kolsquare  it is currently possible to choose from over 3 million influencers, from more than 180 countries, to find the best creators for your marketing messages and connect with your target audiences on all social platforms.

If your company, for example, works in the luxury industry niche, with Kolsquare’s platform you will be able to select the best influencers to help you achieve your brand goals.

Hubspot, workflow management, B2C and inbound marketing campaigns

HubSpot is a sales and customer service software that includes an integrated CRM. HubSpot’s CRM is designed to efficiently organize and manage workflows and inbound marketing campaigns.

This technology solution enables, among other things, contact and database management, marketing automation, content creation, lead tracking, reporting and analytics, email campaign management, website optimization, social media management, and sales performance tracking.

With the help of HubSpot, you can create a centralized database of all your contacts and leads.  An example of how you could include HubSpot in your marketing strategy is to create  forms that allow your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, which you can then add to your contact list.

CRM Salesforce marketing cloud

Salesforce is a CRM that allows you to automate customer relationship management. This tool helps companies to manage and optimize interactions with customers at all stages of the cycle, from lead acquisition to retention and customer service.

Salesforce CRM enables centralized storage and management of customer and prospect information. Likewise, through Salesforce, you can monitor sales opportunities and the negotiation process with each customer. You can record interactions, notes, and tasks related to each opportunity. For example, you can track conversations with a consumer who is interested in buying vegan products and set a reminder to follow up on the purchase process.

Mailchimp, email marketing automation software

Mailchimp is an email marketing automation platform that allows businesses to effectively design, send, and track email campaigns. It is a popular and easy-to-use tool that provides features for managing mailing lists, creating email templates, automating workflows, and analyzing results. It proves ideal for teams looking to improve their operations by reducing the time spent on tasks such as managing hundreds of emails per day.

Mailchimp’s tools allow you to create attractive and personalized emails. To reflect your brand image, you can use pre-designed templates or create your own custom designs. In that case, you can generate a promotional email that includes images of your new products made from recyclable materials and other relevant content, for example.

ActiveCampaing, ecommerce marketing automation tool

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation and CRM platform that helps companies manage and automate their marketing, customer communication, and sales strategies. It provides tools for workflow automation, contact management, email marketing, sales automation, and audience segmentation, enabling more effective and personalized communication with customers and prospects.

This digital solution allows audience segmentation based on interests, behaviors, or demographics. To illustrate, a clothing brand could divide its audience into groups according to their gender preferences (men, women, etc.) or according to the products in which they have shown interest.

Autopilot to automate the customer experience

Autopilot allows companies to create automated workflows based on rules and events. Sending personalized emails, segmenting audiences, scheduling social media posts, tracking leads and more can all be part of these workflows. The Autopilot platform allows marketers to create and manage these workflows with an easy-to-use visual interface.

If you have an online store, you can use Autopilot to automate abandoned cart tracking. You can set up a series of emails that are automatically sent to customers who have added products to the cart but have not completed the purchase. These emails can remind them of the products they left in the process and motivate them to complete the purchase by offering discounts or exclusive promotions.

WordPress for blog marketing automation

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world, with a wide variety of plugins and tools that allow the automation of some processes. In it, it is possible to schedule and publish posts for your company’s blog, automatically share content on social networks, and monitor site statistics. All these functions facilitate marketing actions related to blog management.

Read also: Everything you need to know about vlogging in influencer marketing

Balance in influencer marketing automation: the strategy comes from the team!

Influencer marketing automation is indeed a valuable tool to empower and facilitate marketing actions, but it is necessary for companies to strike a balance between automating tasks and strategic thinking that rely on human intervention, i.e. the members of the marketing team.

While automation can help with all of the aspects discussed throughout this blog, such as influencer research and selection, metrics tracking and post scheduling, it requires that marketers be able to evaluate technology solutions and the results they deliver in terms of campaign quality, authenticity, and results.

Using automation to maximize efficiency and scale will take your campaigns to the next level; however, a balance needs to be struck by recognizing the importance of strategy and human intervention to ensure that influencer collaborations are consistent with brand objectives and achieve the desired results for users.